Haptics is a tactile and force feedback technology that takes advantage of a user's sense of touch by applying haptic feedback effects (i.e., “haptic effects”), such as forces, vibrations, and motions, to the user. Devices, such as mobile devices, touchscreen devices, and personal computers, can be configured to generate haptic effects. In general, calls to embedded hardware capable of generating haptic effects (such as actuators) can be programmed within an operating system (“OS”) of the device. These calls specify which haptic effect to play. For example, when a user interacts with the device using, for example, a button, touchscreen, lever, joystick, wheel, or some other control, the OS of the device can send a play command through control circuitry to the embedded hardware. The embedded hardware then produces the appropriate haptic effect.
Haptic effects are often designed with the intent to produce a specific affective state in users, where an affective state is a representation of an emotive state, such as happy, sad, annoyed, or angry. For example, a haptic effect that acts as an alert may be designed to attract attention to an event without causing annoyance. Similarly, a haptic effect could be designed to produce a pleasant or unpleasant sensation, depending on the context. Designing such haptic effects typically requires manually, and iteratively, refining haptic effects and evaluating the haptic effects with end users, through such tools as user evaluations involving questionnaires or performance data, which can be a time consuming process.